


The Nervous Tick

by thescorpiondoctor



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers: Prime
Genre: Adopted Sibling Relationship, Empurata, Gen, Hands, Heartwarming, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Trauma, Watchmaking, What-If, Whirl Being Whirl, Whirl annoys Ratchet, Whirl in Transformers Prime, Whirl tries not to be a jerk for once, a big helicopter teaches a little seeker, an artist stripped of his art, getting something back through someone else, lost ability, mentoring, reconciling with the past, skills vs talents, unfair cruelties of life
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-30
Updated: 2018-10-03
Packaged: 2019-07-20 14:54:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16139591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thescorpiondoctor/pseuds/thescorpiondoctor
Summary: When Whirl messes up again at helping integrate a young former decepticon into life in the Autobot base, Ratchet suggests he correct his error by getting to know the young ex-con and maybe even teach her something. Whirl is reluctant to go through with this plan as he wants nothing to do with the kid, until he sees her hands. When he learns that the little femme has been picking locks and defusing bombs since practically moments after she was built, he sees that she might just have a natural talent for an old past time of his. Whirl decides to take her on as his student in watchmaking in a feeble attempt at reclaiming what the Empurata ritual cruelly stole from him. At first, his only intentions were to use her to get a taste of his past, but soon he finds himself trapped in a slurry of emotions when he hears tales of her past. Conflicted by his original intentions and the new fondness he is forming for the kid, Whirl becomes a mentor in not only his former craft to a young bot who desperately needs a friend.





	1. Chapter 1

Whirl sat there watching Ratchet repair a piece of equipment, envying the speed and precision at which the medic's hands worked. He had always been in awe of the older bot's practice, not exactly because of the gruesome nature (even though that was a major bonus), but because of the accuracy and skill at which Ratchet's hands worked was phenomenal. It was the perfect balance of precision, skill, and heaven knows how many vorns of practice it had taken for the medic to get this far with his craft. Ratchet knew the inner workings of a mech, the way they ticked and the proper alignment of every cog, piston, transistor, and neural chip. It was fascinating to watch him work, even though Ratchet would often get annoyed at the larger mech's constant gawking and would often kick him out of the medbay at any opportunity he got. 

That only made Whirl want to watch him work more, to see a master at work in his field, content with the world as it was. Whirl had once known the feeling. He had once felt the mechanisms twitching beneath his hands, although not as a surgeon. The chopper's former profession had been watchmaking, and he was good at it too. In his day he was probably the best there was, and it had taken vorns to hone his skills and perfect his craft, the get the watches and timepieces to tick just right. He remembered the freedom of the cogs and gears beneath his servos, every little piece fitting delicately into its place. He remembered the personality each little watch seemed to have and how he had always favored the temperamental ones because they were the most intriguing to work on. There was nothing more satisfying to him that the triumphant feeling of finishing a timepiece and adding the last screws and looking into the glass of its face and seeing his own face smiling back at him in his newly born creation. 

That was back when he had a face that could smile. Now the only face that ever stared back at him was a narrow box with one big yellow optic set in the middle that glared at him in the mirror. Sometimes when he concentrated hard enough, he could imagine expressions onto his face. He liked to think that he could concentrate a glare beam out of his one optic that was so powerful that the person who had bothered him this time would know exactly what he was feeling and run away in fright. But his face wasn't the reason he had discontinued his watchmaking career. If they had just taken his face, he still could have made plenty of decent watches with just one eye. The empurata ritual had taken more than just his face. It had also taken his hands. _They_ had taken his hands. 

That was why he enjoyed watching Ratchet so much, because it reminded him of the happier times when he was making watches. Whirl looked at his own large, awkward, and clumsy pincer claws and then he looked at Ratchet's perfectly chiseled and well worn servos. Those servos had saved hundreds of lives, they had seen hundreds of mishaps, and they could probably tell thousands of stories. Whirl remembered when his own hands had stories to tell, when the tiny mechanisms of the watches he used to make ticked happily beneath his experienced servos. He had once perfected his craft, tuning the chimes and internal mechanisms as well as the master surgeon had tended to his patients. Those days had all faded into memories of a happier time long gone, just as surely as the hands of the watches had ticked irreversibly forward in time. The only difference was that he could not reset the hand that life had dealt him as easily as he had used to reset the hands on malfunctioning timepieces. 

Whirl clicked his pincer-like claw against the nearest table, resting his weight on it as he gazed upon the scene before him, observing how the medic reshaped the metal of the broken equipment to his will. He couldn't help but tap out the rhythm of the ticking of an imaginary watch beneath his servos as his processor began drifting off to another time and place. 

"Will you STOP that incessant tapping? I'm TRYING to concentrate!" Ratchet suddenly roared, throwing his hands up in the air as he spun around to face Whirl. 

Whirl ventilated in annoyance and folded his arms, standing up straighter and shifting his weight from one foot to the other. 

Ratchet paused for a moment to notice that Whirl was still staring at him. Whirl narrowed his optic, continuing to stare before he began loudly tapping his right foot on the ground, even faster than he had been tapping his claw a moment ago. 

"Can't you see that I am BUSY?!" Ratchet huffed. He then looked at Whirl skeptically, narrowing his optics. "Oh, Puh-lease! Don't tell me you came here because you need repairs on something AGAIN?! I thought I fixed your latest mishap less than an hour ago. What is it you want, Whirl?" 

"Oooh, nothing much." Whirl chirped, sarcastic syrupy sweetness dripping from his voice. "I just thought I'd stop by." 

"That's good. For a second there, I thought your vocalizer was broken. I can't read your face, Whirl. Now can you tell me what it is that you need me to look at?" 

Whirl blinked, glaring a little harder at the mech. He should have known better than to make that comment about his face, not that anyone ever did, and he held it against everyone equally. It was Whirl's philosophy to treat everyone with the same degree of indifference and spite and see how many of them actually saw through his ruse of using anger to mask a much more complicated internal psyche. "There's nothing wrong with me doc, besides the obvious. I simply wanted to watch. Do you have a problem?" Whirl chimed. He would have been sneering if he had his original face. 

Ratchet huffed and pulled an exasperated scowl. "Other than my problem with you calling me doc and being intentionally annoying, no, I do not have a problem, to answer your question! And if you're perfectly fine, then why don't you make yourself useful and not disrupt me while I'm WORKING!" 

"Oh, well I'm sorry to bother you. Clearly there are better things I could be doing, aren't there. Like perhaps lobbing with Bulkhead, who by the way thinks I'm a terrible throw. I could try talking to Bumblebee, except HE's out playing with his little human. Or I could try Optimus and Arcee, except they're busy on a mission that requires and I quote 'tact and precision'. And so I thought to myself I'd pay you a nice little visit and watch you work, because other than punching holes in the wall, which I'm apparently not allowed to do any more to preserve the structural integrity of the base, there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING for me to do around here. Join the team, they said. It would be fun, they said. Well THEY deserve a punch in the face. Who says that kind of thing anyways? It's false advertising! And now I'm stranded on this rock with nowhere to go except out into the great beyond of tiny crawly fleshy things. No thank you." Whirl ranted. 

Ratchet vented loudly and shook his head, massaging his temples with one hand and trying to come up with an idea that would get Whirl out of his way whilst still being as supportive and understanding as he possibly could be. It was then that an idea came to his head that he couldn't help to suggest. The medic raised his helm and met Whirl's gaze, optics to optic and sighed. "Have you tried talking to......Stormshift?" Ratchet asked, pausing for a moment and almost regretting his words as soon as they had escaped his intake. 

"The decepticon?!" Whirl hissed, reeling back and trying to make the most appalled and disgusted look a mech with one optic could possibly pull off. 

"Former decepticon. And I'm hoping it stays that way. Maybe you could help convince her to join us. And anyways, it would be better than you standing around tapping on things." Ratchet replied. 

Whirl glared even harder. "I honestly didn't think a mech as old and crusty as you could pull off a joke like that. Heck, I didn't even know you had a sense of humor." he remarked, his tones laced with sarcasm. 

"I wasn't joking." Ratchet growled, raising a digit as he stepped forward and shook his fist in Whirl's face. 

"If you wanna intimidate me you should try harder." 

"I'm not trying to-Argh! My point is, you're lonely. Stormshift is lonely. You lonely bots should go be lonely somewhere else so I can be lonely while I'm working." Ratchet replied. 

Whirl stood there and indignantly shook his head. "No. Nuh-uh. There's no way I'm talking to the con. She isn't even half my age, and plus, I'm the one who shot her down and got her stuck with us here in the first place. The kid probably hates me already, just like everyone who has ever laid optics on me. I'm a hazard to everyone I interact with, and proud. I have standards. And I'm not lowering those standards to socialize with a little decepticon." 

"Which is exactly why you should talk to her and APOLOGIZE, Whirl. Or at the very least stand on opposite ends of the room while awkwardly staring at each other. I don't care what you do so long as neither of you end up in the med bay. Now get out of here. You're disrupting the peace of my work environment." 

"But-..." Whirl started, before Ratchet put a servo on his chestplate and gently but firmly shoved him towards the door. Whirl raised a claw to protest. 

"Get out before I decide to rewire your neural circuits so that you're immobilized for the rest of the day." Ratchet said, getting even more eager to send the irritating copter on his way. 

"I know you didn't mean that." Whirl said, a bit used to being threatened by people. 

"SHOO." Ratchet said as he pushed Whirl into the hallway outside the medbay and then closed the doors before Whirl could re-enter. 

Whirl could have sworn that there was a self satisfied smirk on Ratchet's face when he closed the door, almost as if the old medic was up to something.


	2. Chapter 2

Whirl stood there outside the medbay door a bit stunned that Ratchet had just up and pushed him out. The look on Ratchet's face just as the door had closed confused him to no end. What was it that Ratchet knew that he was missing out on? Whirl clicked his claws a couple times and shifted his weight. His optic scanned the hall for any sign of entertainment. As he stood there, his auditory receptors picked up on the slight tapping of footsteps rounding a corner. He could tell just by the light, fluttery pace that the approaching bot was very nervous and excitable. Whirl rubbed his claws together, listening as the bot approached and creeping a few steps forward. He was surprisingly light on his feet for a bot his size. As the tiny, thin mint green and black seeker rounded the corner, Whirl stuck out his head and let out a bored and mildly sarcastic exclamation of "Boo!", which somehow startled the little femme out of her wits and caused her wings to twitch as her optics widened in fear as she let out a little yelp. 

The tides reversed, and this time it was Whirl who was surprised at how startled the little femme was. She should have heard him coming from a mile away. Even with his light footsteps he wasn't exactly the quietest thing there was around the autobot base. Now the little femme was shaking, as if he had fired a weapon at her or something. Whirl really didn't know what to make of it. He wasn't used to other bots being so excitable. Excitable wasn't exactly the word he was looking for. The tiny femme was veering a lot more on petrified and traumatized. She just stood there shaking with her arms held crossed over her face, cringing back, cowering, weak at the knees, ventilating heavily. 

"What's wrong with you?" Whirl directly asked, no longer amused with how scared she was. Now it was bordering on just sad. Were all decepticons really this pitiful? How old was this kid anyways, and why couldn't she take a little joke? The little femme let out a tiny sound like a ensnared mouse, as if she was trying to speak but the words had died in her throat along with her dignity. 

Within seconds, the door to the medbay slammed open and Ratchet furiously peeked out of the doorway and glared down the hall. Even though Whirl's back was turned he could feel the searing anger in the medic's gaze. "WHAT IS GOING ON OUT HERE?!" Ratchet roared, his optics scanning the scene and picking out every detail. 

Whirl spun around and blinked, narrowing his optic back at Ratchet and indignantly crossing his arms. 

The little femme just stood there shaking, her optics darting back and forth between Ratchet and Whirl as she tried to make sense of the scene before her. 

"I think she's broken." Whirl remarked, reaching out a claw and nudging the femme towards Ratchet with no sympathy whatsoever in his mannerisms or his gaze. 

The little femme stood there almost in a trance, unsure of how to react to Whirl's sudden and abrupt touch. Ratchet stepped fully into the hallway and slowly approached the two of them, making small and slow movements as he drew nearer. Whirl had no idea at first why the medic was doing so, and so he just callously blurted out, "You look ridiculous." 

At that, the tiny mint green and black femme's wings twitched and she flinched. 

"Will you stop that?" Whirl snapped, glaring at her and realizing that the more scared the femme was, the longer the lecture would be that he'd get the second she was out of audial range. The smaller bot scrambled towards Ratchet and latched onto him with her little arms, clamping his waist in a tight hug and burying her face in his plating. Whirl rolled his optic in disgust and scoffed as Ratchet carefully scooped the femme up whilst giving Whirl a stern glare. 

Ratchet turned his attention back to the femme and he faked a weary smile to try and reassure her. "Are you alright, little one?" he asked. 

"I'm fine, thank you for asking. Can I go now?" Whirl growled, feeling quite out of place. Ratchet shot him another one of those infamous glares before once more turning back to his charge. "I was asking Stormshift. I know you're fine because I ran your vital stats merely hours ago." Ratchet huffed. The medic turned and walked back towards the medbay with the little femme in his arms. Whirl followed, glaring at the thing in Ratchet's arms the second the old medic had turned his back. 

Ratchet shook his head at Whirl the moment the chopper tried to cross the threshold into the medbay and he raised his servo over the control panel that closed and locked the doors. 

"Oh, so you allow a decepticon in there to watch you work, and leech off all of your greatest secrets, but you won't allow ME? I see how it is." Whirl remarked. 

"I'm just bringing her in to run a diagnostic to see if I can figure out just WHAT you did to her. It'll only be a few kliks. And unlike you, she knows how to behave." Ratchet tersely replied as he set Stormshift down on the medical berth and motioned for her to stay put. 

"Ouch. If I actually cared, I'd be feeling really insulted just about now." Whirl said. The little femme blinked at him, and he glared back in unblinking disgust. He couldn't believe that not moments earlier Ratchet had been prompting him to talk to her. Now he was seeing the effects of his plan in action, and Whirl hoped that after this Ratchet would know better than to get him to be friendly with decepticons, former or not. Regardless of the kid's alliance, Whirl figured that his opinion of her would be more or less the same. 

Whirl watched from the doorway as the blue beam of Ratchet's scanner washed over the femme's tiny frame and the medic took note of his findings. The femme was absolutely fine, besides her elevated spark rate and the spots where she was healing from her recent injuries, Ratchet had found nothing wrong with her. The orange and white medic looked up towards the doorway after the scan, where Whirl was still standing there at the threshold. 

"I'm not going to accept your apology." Whirl said, crossing his arms and turning his head up and away. 

"I didn't apologize." Ratchet stated, having calmed down a considerable amount now that he had realized that Stormshift wasn't hurt. 

"I'm not going to accept your absence of an apology either." the chopper remarked indignantly. 

"While we're on the subject of apologies, I believe you owe one to Stormshift." Ratchet replied with an almost smirk as if he was amused at beating Whirl at his own game. 

"I didn't do anything." Whirl growled back. 

Ratchet clenched his servos into fists. "ARE YOU SERIOUS?! YOU'RE the one who SHOT HER DOWN! If you hadn't disobeyed direct orders and insisted on a one sided dogfight, then we would never be in this situation of fostering a decepticon in the first place!" he roared. 

"Well look at what my convenient disobedience got us. A new pet. You should be thanking me. But instead you take the decepticons' side over your own team?! I'm disgusted with you." Whirl paused, before he tapped his helm with a claw. "This is my disgusted face if you can't tell! I never wanted to take her in, and yet it's always my fault! The kid should be glad I knocked her out of the sky so you could get her away from Megatron and his bandwagon freak show! But no. Everything bad that happens HAPPENS TO BE MY FAULT!" 

Stormshift looked between the two arguing mechs, not exactly sure where she fit into all of this. She let out a tiny, awkward cough and both of them spun around to face her. 

"Shut up, squirt! The adults are talking here." Whirl snapped, pointing a pincer-ed claw at her. 

"WHIRL!" Ratchet hollered, stepping between the little femme and the fuming helicopter. "That is no way to talk to her. You SCARED her!" 

"So what. Like that counts for anything against the THOUSANDS of bots her kind has shot and gutted! Do you really think I care about one stray decepticon who flew a little too far from the fleet?" Whirl retorted. 

"BY ALL MEANS YOU SHOULD CARE!!!" Ratchet bellowed, lunging even closer towards Whirl. He raised his fist, almost considering the prospect of punching out Whirl's optic for his uncanny insolence before Stormshift climbed down from the berth and walked up to him, tapping him on the elbow. Ratchet's expression softened momentarily as he looked down at the little femme. "Yes?" he asked gently. 

"Ratchet...c-can...can I go now?" Stormshift squeaked out, quite frightened by all the conflict around her. 

"Of-of course! I never said you couldn't. You're free to go wherever you want as long as it's where we can find you." Ratchet replied, taken aback by her sudden request. 

Stormshift bowed her head and then bolted out of the room. Whirl watched her run off in slight amusement as he let slip a little whisper of "Good riddance." 

Whirl was suddenly taken off guard as he turned to leave himself when Ratchet's servo clamped down on his lower arm. Even though he towered over the old field medic, Whirl was quite intimidated by the gesture. 

"When she gets back, you are coming with me to APOLOGIZE!" Ratchet sternly said, digging his digits harder into Whirl's mesh. 

Whirl silently nodded, all the while trying to think of a way to be absent when the time did come to apologize. After all, he didn't believe he had done anything wrong.


End file.
